A colour movie of Hale-Bopp. The images were taken by
Michael Brown (University of Melbourne) on the evening
of 2 March 1998 with the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring
Observatories 40 inch Telescope. The 6 images were taken
between 9:57 UT and 11:02 UT and clearly show the motion of
the comet. The comet's tail can be seen stretching
towards a small group of galaxies near the top right of the
image. Each colour image is a composite of 60 second R band,
90 second V band and 120 second B band images. The size of
the images is 7 arcminutes by 10 arcminutes. The "donut"
towards the top of the image is an artifact of the telescope.
The bright coloured dots are cosmic rays detected by the CCD.
Dust in the orbital plane of the comet is seen in the raw
images but not in this animation.